Stray Hearts

by Jane Graves

  “Kay...?” Matt’s voice was low and deliberate. “Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on here.”

  She pointed a furious finger at Robert. “I want him gone. No. Let me amend that. I want him dead!”

  “Really, Kay,” Robert said, folding his arms across his chest. “Isn’t it about time you learned to control your temper?”

  “You haven’t even begun to see my temper, you slimebag!”

  “Oh? And just what do you intend to do this time? You’ve already shaved every animal I’ve got.”

  While Kay continued to squirm in Matt’s grip, Robert smiled broadly. “Well, Forester, I can see you’ve got your hands full, so I’ll be going. It was nice chatting with you, Kay. I’ll drop by again next time I’m in the neighborhood. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.” Robert gave her one last nasty little chuckle, then turned and strode out the front door.

  “Matt! Let...me...go!"

  “Are you going after him?” Matt said.

  “Yes!”

  “Then I’m not letting you go.”

  Kay yanked vainly at Matt’s forearm, then tried twisting left and right, but his grip was far too strong. “I’m not really going to kill him, Matt. I swear. I’m just going to make him wish he were dead!”

  “Just calm down,” Matt said in a disgustingly reasonable tone of voice, “and tell me what happened.”

  “You want to know what happened? Take a whiff.”

  He sniffed, then leaned away slightly to glance down at the leg of her jeans. “Uh-oh. Which dog got you?”

  “Rambo. Robert showed up here to gloat just about at the time that canine cretin mistook my leg for a tree. Of course, Robert thought it was the most hysterical thing he’d ever seen. I hate him, Matt. I hate everything about him. I hate the way he looks, the way he walks, the way he talks—”

  Matt pulled a kitchen chair away from the table and sat Kay down in it. She immediately tried to rise. He put his hands on her shoulders, shoved her down again, then pulled out a chair and sat down beside her.

  “Kay? Can I ask you a question?”

  She crossed her arms and fumed silently.

  “Why in the world did you want to marry a guy like him?”

  She met Matt’s gaze, staring at him a long time. She hated to say it out loud, because it sounded so dumb. “As soon as I told my family that Robert proposed, you’d have thought I won the lottery, the way they went on. By the time they got through telling me how lucky I was, I figured they’d disown me if I turned him down. I think it was the first time in my life I did something they actually approved of.”

  Matt stared at her blankly for a moment, as if he hadn’t quite comprehended her meaning. “That’s why you were going to marry him?”

  “You don’t understand, Matt. My parents are attorneys. My sister’s an attorney. All I am is a legal assistant, and even that’s pretty recent. Before that I was...”

  Kay paused, feeling as if she was about to confess that she’d once been a streetwalker, and a pretty sleazy one at that.

  “...a waitress.”

  She waited for that subtle twist of the mouth, the slight turning up of the nose she always saw on people’s faces whenever she mentioned that word. But on Matt she saw neither.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a waitress,” he said. “It’s good, honest work.”

  Kay blinked with surprise. “I quit college my freshman year,” she went on, knowing most people with advanced degrees thought dropouts were morons. Her family certainly did. But Matt just shrugged.

  “College isn’t for everyone.”

  Maybe he wasn’t hearing her right. She shifted around and looked at him head-on. “I once got suspended from high school for toilet-papering the principal’s house.”

  “I know a guy who went with his friends to his history teacher’s house and lobbed raw eggs onto her skylights. It was a hundred and two degrees that day. They fried.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He graduated, went to college and became a veterinarian.”

  Kay smiled, even as her heart was breaking. As easily as her family made her feel inferior, Matt made her feel wonderful. Why couldn’t he be more to her than just a friend?

  “So what did you do in kindergarten?” he asked her. “Spray paint your ABCs on the schoolhouse wall?”

  Kindergarten. She winced at the very thought of it. “No, but I once had to spend three days of recess time standing in the corner because I refused to color inside the lines.”

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “You really were a radical.”

  “Yeah. My teacher thought the world was going to end if I didn’t get that red crayon in exactly the right place. My mother felt the same way, because the punishment didn’t end with my nose in the corner at school.”

  “Conformity is overrated. Look at the way you solve problems. You wanted the cat litter. I wouldn’t buy it, so you got them to donate it.”

  “That was no great accomplishment,” she said, waving her hand. “Anyone with the gift of gab could have done the same thing.”

  “And you work hard at the shelter. The Cat Room looks like the Ritz Carlton.”

  “Big deal. Anyone with a strong back and a strong stomach could manage that, too.”

  “And for the first time in a long time,” Matt said, his voice softening, “I don’t hate the thought of coming home at night.”

  Kay closed her eyes, his words filling her with such warmth and comfort that the cold sting of her family’s disapproval disappeared from her thoughts in a mental poof. Then frustration crept in again. Why was he saying such wonderful things? Didn’t he know it made her want him that much more?

  “Stop listening to your family,” Matt said. “They’ll make you crazy.”

  Hadn’t Sheila told her that at least a hundred times? Wasn’t it time she started believing it? “I don’t listen to them. I don’t care what they think. Not anymore.”

  Kay’s mouth moved with conviction, but she just couldn’t get the rest of her body to follow suit. She bowed her head, then felt the tears coming. Damn. She was such a fool. Why else would she spend her whole life looking for approval from people she didn’t even like?

  She blinked quickly, feeling utterly ridiculous for crying over something she shouldn’t even care about in the first place—especially in front of Matt.

  “Okay,” she said, sniffing a little. “So I’m not there yet. But I’m getting better.”

  At that moment Matt decided he hated every single member of Kay’s family, and he’d never even met them. How could they do that to her? It infuriated him to think that someone could be as smart and capable as Kay, yet be told all her life she wasn’t.

  “So I guess it must have been pretty awkward when Robert broke your engagement,” he said.

  Kay’s eyes widened. “Is that what he told you? That he broke our engagement?”

  “Uh—yeah.”

  For a moment Kay looked positively homicidal. Then her expression settled into one of disgusted resignation. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. If he’d have sex in his office with another woman three months before our wedding, he wouldn’t think twice about lying about it, now would he?”

  Matt’s mouth dropped open. “He cheated on you? In his office?”

  “Knowing Robert, he was too cheap to get a hotel room.”

  Matt couldn’t believe it. All this time Hollinger had led him to believe that he was the noble one and Kay was the savage. Now that he knew the truth, Hollinger’s stock had just plunged to an all-time low.

  Kay sat in silence, staring down at her hands. To his dismay, he saw tears fill her eyes again. Then he had a thought that was completely intolerable. Could it be she still had feelings for Hollinger?

  “Don’t,” he said softly. “Robert’s not worth it.”

  “No,” she said, waving her hand. “It’s not that. Believe me. I don’t give a damn about Robert Hollinger.” She sighed. “It’s j
ust the whole idea of it, you know? Finding out you’re less important to the man you’re going to marry than a cheap brunette and three cocker spaniels?”

  Matt thought he’d known what a jerk Hollinger was, but now he realized he’d only been seeing the tip of that iceberg. First her family, then her fiancé.

  “Now I really know why you had those dogs shaved.” He smiled. “Good for you.”

  Kay sniffed, then shook her head. “No. It’s not good for me. I’m too impulsive and it gets me into trouble every time. If it wasn’t for the fact that I did the dog-shaving thing, I wouldn’t even be here.”

  Matt slid his palm against her face, brushing away a tear with his thumb. “And that,” he said, “would have been my loss.”

  She froze, her blue eyes widening with surprise. Caught in her gaze, he couldn’t look away. He trailed his thumb along her cheekbone, and slowly her surprise melted into a look of awareness, of expectation. She inclined her head to lean into his hand, closed her eyes and exhaled softly. Oh, boy.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted something as desperately as he wanted to kiss her right now. With her eyes closed he gazed at her leisurely, at the feathered lashes that brushed her cheeks, the delicate bone structure of her face and those warm, lush lips that were sending him a silent invitation to come closer. It was as if a thin, delicate thread was drawing him toward her, compelling him to kiss her so thoroughly and completely that it would make up for all the time he’d wasted not kissing her.

  But he couldn’t. Not yet.

  And the reason he couldn’t was because Robert Hollinger was a nasty, manipulative jerk who’d maneuvered him into a position where he had no choice but to act as if he was, at the very most, Kay’s big brother or best buddy. And big brothers and best buddies couldn’t even conceive of the thoughts that were running through his mind right now.

  With great reluctance, he pulled his hand back and leaned away. She blinked her eyes open and stared at him, looking a little disoriented.

  “I think I heard a car door outside,” Matt said, his voice a little shaky. “Maybe it’s a family with six kids and they all want a pet.”

  Kay blinked. “Yeah. Okay.” She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. “I’ll tell them we’re having a two-for-one special.”

  She managed a wobbly smile, then grabbed a paper towel on her way out of the kitchen and dabbed at her eyes. As she disappeared into the hall, Matt dropped his head to his hands and let out a long breath.

  He kept telling himself she wasn’t the right woman for him. That in the long run she wouldn’t understand about the shelter, that she’d resent the money he spent just to take care of a ragtag bunch of animals. But the warnings he issued himself were only halfhearted, because now he knew that Kay hadn’t gone looking for Hollinger. He’d just been the convenient fulfillment of other people’s expectations, which meant her life goals probably didn’t center around his-and-hers limos and a winter house in Florida.

  She had less than fifteen hours left to work at the shelter. Once she’d put in her time, it wouldn’t be long before she’d be moving out, and all at once he realized he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving. It had been so long since he’d had a warm, breathing human being beside him that he’d almost forgotten what it was like, and now that he remembered, he never wanted to be without it again.

  Without her again.

  How had this happened? It wasn’t just loneliness, and it wasn’t just lust. He’d blamed his feelings on those two things for quite some time now, but slowly his brain was admitting what his heart already knew. It wasn’t just any warm body he wanted next to his. It was Kay’s.

  He didn’t know how much longer he could play this game. Sooner or later she was going to see in his eyes how much he wanted her, and hear it in his voice, and he wouldn’t be able to fool her anymore.

  Later that evening, Matt came in the kitchen door just as his phone rang. As soon as he picked it up and heard the voice on the other end, he wished he hadn’t

  Hollinger. Just hearing that smug voice, after what Kay had told him today, made his blood boil.

  “I just wanted to let you know how pleased I am with the way things are turning out,” Hollinger said. “That little show this afternoon was worth every string I’ve had to pull to get you that grant.”

  “Those things happen sometimes when you’re around animals.”

  “Yes, they sometimes do. And seeing it happen to Kay made my day.”

  Matt was silent.

  “I wanted to let you know, too, that the awards ceremony is in two weeks.”

  Matt froze. “Awards ceremony?”

  “Of course. At the Fairmont Hotel. We’re expecting two hundred people. And the press will be there—”

  “Press? Now, wait a minute, Robert. You never said anything about—”

  “What did you think was going to happen, Forester? Did you think I’d just send you a check in the mail?”

  That was exactly what he’d thought. “No. Of course not. I just—”

  “Two weeks from today at seven o’clock.” Robert paused. “I assume there’s no problem with that?”

  “Uh—no. No problem.”

  “Good work, Forester,” Hollinger said. “I knew I could count on you.”

  As Matt hung up the phone, panic started to set in. An awards ceremony? Two hundred people? The press, for God’s sake?

  When he thought of the measures he might have to take to keep Hollinger’s involvement from Kay, it just about made him sick. Could he tell her the truth? Maybe now she would understand.

  Oh, hell. Who was he kidding? After what had happened with Rambo today, her disgust with Hollinger had reached an all-time high. He pictured the look of betrayal that would spring to Kay’s face if she found out what an underhanded deal he’d made with Hollinger, and he just couldn’t bear it.

  One way or another, he had to find a way to pick up that grant money without Kay finding out the real reason he was getting it.

  Several days later, Kay sprawled on her bed, staring down at the checkbook calendar she held. A couple of months ago she’d circled the third Friday in September in red, looking forward to the day she’d be through at the shelter and Robert would be out of her life for good.

  She slapped the calendar shut and rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. As badly as she’d wanted to get the hundred hours over with in the beginning, that’s how badly she now wanted them never to end. The thought of leaving Matt was unbearable.

  Marilyn leaped from the windowsill and jumped up on the bed beside Kay. She stroked her absentmindedly, and the cat collapsed beside her, her purr reverberating through the silence of the room.

  “Okay, Marilyn. You’re a woman. And you’ve known him longer than I have. What am I doing wrong here?”

  Marilyn turned to her with the arrogant expression of a feline sex goddess who could wiggle one paw and every tomcat within ten miles would come rushing to her side. He’s just one man, those green eyes said, and human at that. So what’s the problem?

  “Great,” Kay muttered. “Even the cat thinks I’m pitiful.”

  Ever since the day Robert had showed up at the shelter, Kay had held on to a tiny thread of hope that something might happen between her and Matt, something to bring back the warmth she’d felt as he touched her cheek and smiled at her and told her that her family was worthless but she wasn’t. But nothing had. While Matt was still sweet and wonderful and the best company she’d ever had, the invisible wall remained between them. And it looked as if it would stay there forever.

  She heard Matt’s voice calling to her up the back stairs, telling her dinner was ready. She rose with a heavy sigh and trudged downstairs. Matt pulled a pair of chicken pot pies out of the oven and they sat down to eat.

  “Well,” Kay said, struggling for nonchalance, “I guess I have only a few more hours left to work at the shelter.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I thin
k I’ll go apartment hunting on Saturday.”

  “Don’t hurry. You can stay here as long as you need to.”

  How about forever?

  She knew he was just being nice, and she had no intention of prolonging the inevitable. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be to leave. And what if she stayed a few weeks longer, or maybe a month, and then one day Matt started to date someone? How could she deal with that? How could she sit by and watch some other woman have the man she wanted more than anything?

  No. A clean break. It was the only way.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “I have the money for an apartment deposit. I'll move out as soon as I find an apartment.”

  He nodded silently, and she wanted to cry. All Matt was losing was a roommate. Kay was losing the man she loved.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning at work, Kay walked around in a daze, and it wasn’t long until her state of mind translated to paper cuts and misrouted emails and, right now, a spilled cup of coffee. As she stood in the kitchenette, pulling a wad of paper towels off the roll, she hoped Mr. Breckenridge wouldn’t come wandering in and realize just how much of a klutz she’d become.

  She swiped at the puddle of coffee on the counter, vowing to keep her mind on her work instead of on Matt. The woman she was filling in for would be coming back in a week, taking back the job Kay had actually grown to like. She intended to do the best job she could until then, hoping at least to get some kind of reference from Mr. Breckenridge that might help her find a permanent job after she left.

  “Ms. Ramsey?”

  Kay spun around, tucking the coffee-soaked paper towels behind her back. Mr. Breckenridge was standing behind her.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “May 1 see you for a moment, please?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Kay didn’t miss the ominous tone in his voice and wondered what was up. She followed him into his office. He motioned for her to close the door and sit down, his expression grim.

  “Robert Hollinger. I understand you worked for him.” A rush of foreboding overwhelmed her. She’d assumed because she’d lasted several weeks there that Robert didn’t know where she worked. But it looked as if he’d finally tracked her down.